The Heaviest Weight
by cantlivewithnolaughgal
Summary: AU one-shot. Clarke's well acquainted with the art of keeping secrets. Bellarke.


**This is just a short unbetaed AU what-could-have-been thing. Bellarke.**

**WARNING: NON-GRAPHIC CHILD ABUSE**

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><p>Secrets. It's what they all kept, the rich kids. The sneaky little white lies adding up until they rival the largest mountain on earth, and no one knows. The kids from Arcadia are taught from a young age, not intentionally, to lie even in their sleep if necessary.<p>

Clarke knows. As the deemed "princess" of the Ark, she's by far the best liar. With experience, she has become apt at acting ignorant and putting on the ditzy, I'm-superior behavior that all the other girls have coined. Sometimes she's so _on_ that she even manages to fool herself in that moment. At night, though, in the dark of her own room and the silence as her parents are elsewhere, she knows.

She knows that absentee parents were better than what her situation is. Those kids who always sneer at her as they pass her in the hallway don't notice that she never shows much skin anymore. They don't notice the handprints on her arms or the cigarette burn on her shoulder or the scarred over marks of lashes on her back. They can't see the heavy weight of the _you're so stupid _and _you'll never amount to anything_ and _medicine is the only thing you will ever do, so help me God_ that bring her heart to the floor.

It's a game, all a game, and Clarke? She dominates.

It's only when she turns fifteen that cracks in her perfect rich, smart, naïve persona start forming, and it starts with a boy named Bellamy. He's older, she knows, and the parents wouldn't approve. She knows and yet she does it anyways. Clarke meets him while she's doing shifts at the medical center, helping out as much as she can as an intern under the sharp watch of her ever-so-judgmental mother.

And, Oh God, the situation goes to shit. Thirteen months she hides it successfully, enough that she falls in love with the handsome, difficult guard and that he trusts her to meet his little sister, Octavia. Clarke wouldn't tell, never, not even if she hates Bellamy with a passion because Clarke is well equipped at understanding situations and keeping secrets. She doesn't tell him about her parents, but to be fair, she doesn't tell anyone. She just holds onto his _I love you_ and sneaking kisses around the Ark like they are gold.

She doesn't realize it until later that he's the first person who makes her feel like someone who actually mattered. By then, it's too late.

Clarke has an innate sense of danger walking home from work one night. It's ten or so at night, a late evening with few people out. Her heart weighs heavy as she approaches the lights of her family complex and as she opens the door, she faces her two parents, calmly seated at the table together as if they aren't _monsters_, with impending doom.

She knows better than to talk. They'll speak when they're ready.

It turns out that ready comes after a couple solid punches and scratch marks that will most definitely bleed for hours. It's her dad that speaks first, and Clarke knows that someone had told him who his daughter is hanging around with.

"Did you know?" He yells at her, slapping her at her silence. Clarke stutters, unable to equate the question with an answer. "About the girl! Did you know that your little boyfriend was hiding a sister beneath the floorboards?"

And well isn't that great? Sweet, we-play-board-games-and-talk-about-stuff Octavia has been found. It tears Clarke's heart out, and a couple of tears fall from Clarke's eyes before she transforms into stone.

"And do you know who snitched? Her own mother, the bitch, said she was done with the kid. Maybe we should say that with you, huh?" Abby sneers at her daughter. "Those poor kids don't even know. Maybe we should tell them it was you."

They do. Clarke doesn't even care. She's nursing a couple broken bones and a series of painful bruises so that she can't even walk for weeks after the event. Clarke thinks it's for the best, anyways; she's a liar, so what is one more lie? It'll save the Blake family way more pain in that way.

She knows that Bellamy's mother gets floated. Clarke hates the death but has a hard time reconciling the woman who gave Clarke cookies and the woman who turned in her own kid. Needless to say, hours of sleep are lost on this issue. But Clarke also devotes the majority of her time covertly pulling favors to help Octavia out in juvenile detention. The years of keeping others' secrets pay off at this front, and Clarke feels accomplished to slow down Octavia's inevitable execution.

And then Clarke's life gets worse. Her father finds out about the oxygen problem, Abby kills him, and tries to get Clarke killed, too. Clarke has known her parents are maniacs, but it's at this moment she realizes they're also psychopaths too.

She lives through the whole ordeal to be sent to earth, and isn't it generous of her mother to send her down with the people on the Ark who hate her the most? If she isn't already dead because of a secret she wouldn't have told in the first place, she's absolutely toast now. It only marginally worries her that she can't seem to care.

Wells is there, too. She knows that he tried to protect her when her mother slaughtered her father, only because she protected the Blake family when she subtly started the rumor that she was the one who snitched. The two outsiders spend a lot of time together in those first few days, and they definitely don't speak much to anyone else.

So what if the kids want to party? Wells and Clarke are out of their own personal hells for a while. They've always been bonded together, not because of who their parents were but because of the marks noticed marring their skin. They're friends of healing and of mutual pain at the hands of their parents.

Bellamy finds out she's there relatively quickly. The king of the hill blows up at her, calls her everything she's heard before, and she realizes that no one in this world really cares anyways. But she still stays silent and takes it all even though she knows she could stop it with one word. She's a masochist this way, always taking the pain that isn't hers to take.

It's four months in, when Clarke is running the entire med bay with shit materials and is the mediator between the leaders, the fiery hot mess Bellamy and the holier-than-thou Finn, that Octavia pieces parts of the puzzle together. It's awful to see the pain etched into the girl's face when she realizes her own mother condemned her, and it's even worse that Clarke can't relate because her parents sucked.

Octavia tells Bellamy. Like all screwed up teenagers, Clarke and Bellamy don't talk about it.

Clarke is the one who Anya chooses to negotiate with. Interestingly enough, the grounders seem to be mostly matriarchal societies that value one's endurance through pain. Clarke thinks that she might find some decency in that form of government. The meeting starts off rocky due to the fact that Clarke immediately picks up on dangerous vibes. She dodges Anya's first knife thrust but it rips her jacket. Once the knife is put away again, _crisis averted_, Clarke just takes off her jacket to show her ripped tank top and the multitude of scars hidden underneath.

Word spreads quickly. Some people think she's suicidal. But Clarke uses the mess on her body to convince Anya to negotiate for peace. Clarke knows that Anya sees her as a warrior, not an abused kid. Clarke does nothing to qualm the rumors about the scars. She thinks it's interesting that no one seems to draw the correct, most obvious conclusion.

Well, all but one: Bellamy. Oh, Bellamy Blake. He realizes what they mean. They finally have that really, really delayed talk and make their peace with each other. The king releases his princess from the weight of her lies and secrets. Clarke agrees that they should take it slow, and the two meld back together so that the girls stop coming to Bellamy's tent and those inappropriate comments snarked at Clarke cease. The camp thrives at the will of their "mom and dad," and Clarke finally thinks that, well, maybe she really does deserve something in life.

And, by the way, it ends with some really hot sex.

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><p><strong>So, hope you liked it. Hope there weren't too many mistakes. THE HUG. DAAAWWWW. That inspired this, kind of.<strong>

**-cantlivewithnolaughgal**


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